


Drawing Blood from Stone

by MelanisticMoon



Category: Trollhunters (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Flashbacks, Friends to Enemies, Half-Changeling Jim, Identity Reveal, Minor Character Death, Secret Identity, Trollhunter Barbara Lake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-13 19:23:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15371604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelanisticMoon/pseuds/MelanisticMoon
Summary: Kanjigar died twenty years before his time, and Barbara Lake became the first human Trollhunter. Now, she must manage an exhausting full-time job while protecting Trollmarket and raising a not-quite-human son.





	1. Code Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning in this chapter for non-graphic depiction of medical procedures

The dawn was coming to collect. No matter how far they went, they would never escape daylight. It exposed villains and victims without impunity.

Wisps of moonlight were a soft imitation of the sun, filtering through the window on tired motes of dust. The sheets were soft against her skin, a counterpoint to his scratchy, unshaved face.

They lay there, curled around each other like two nautiluses in one shell, forehead to forehead. She breathed in his familiar scent—sharp aftershave, chalk, and breath mingled of apple and minty toothpaste. His eyes were open, glowing softly in the dark.

“I’ve gained prestige among the Janus,” he whispered. If she wasn’t tucked around him, she would scarcely hear the words as soft as they were. His embrace tightened protectively around her. “Bular is ordering me away.”

She took the thought in the darkness and spun it around her mind like thin, red thread around a spool. Her fingers wrinkled the cotton of his undershirt. “No,” she whispered, without allowing her mind to settle. She knew he wouldn’t leave them. Not if he had a choice.

“Barbara. We’ve known this day would come.” He sighed. The light abruptly quelled as he shut his eyes, pinched and shadowed with fatigue. She put a hand to his face, and he leaned into the touch. The glint of silver hair at his temple marked the passage of time, of how it had worn him down like water eroding stone.

Barbara thought of the little boy one room over, sleeping like the proverbial rock. She wanted to shut her eyes, too, to just go to sleep and hand the truth back to herself in the morning. But she couldn’t avoid it. It was inevitable.

“What are you going to do?”

The apple of his throat bob as he swallowed heavily. “I don’t—”

“You can’t defy him again. He’ll kill you.”

His eyes flashed open. “Then what am I supposed to do!” His voice was tight, but his hands trembled. “If I run, they’ll find me. If I try to stay, I’ll be punished. But I can’t leave you. I can’t—”  

He laughed, but it was bitter, like the dark tea he savored in the early morning. His voice cracked. “I was a fool to think that I deserved this.”

Her insides twisted up in pretzel knots. There were so many knots in her already. If she weren’t a doctor, she’d be concerned that’d she burst from the pressure.

One of them had to be the anchor. She steadied her voice before saying, “I love you. I love you.” His face softened and crumbled, and she took it between her hands again. She made him see the truth in her face. “But I also know how important you are to the Janus. If Bulor succeeds…” The idea spilled from her like a gallon of water poured into a one ounce cup. She couldn’t even think it. “Then _none_ of this will matter.”

He kissed her softly, tenderly, like it might be his last chance. She allowed herself to close her eyes, to melt into the sensation. She was here and now, in their bedroom. Tomorrow trolls could reign hell from infinite midnight, but in this moment she lived in the midnight suspended in moonbeams and tucked into her lover’s kiss.

They parted. Her breath was fast, her heartbeat in her ear like a ticking clock wound too tight.

He took her hands in his, and gently kissed her knuckles. “What would you have me do?”

“Be afraid,” she told him. “But don’t let that fear stop you.” Her fingers laced with his. “We fight so our son never has to.”

 

 

_Ten years later_

The sirens beyond the ER wailed like ancient wraiths and flashed their blue and red emergency lights as will-o-wisps in the night. Barbara was the attending surgeon, waiting for her patient like a surfer waiting for the crest of a wave. It was as expected as it was sudden. Her blue crocs squeaked as she rose and fell from her tiptoes.

Paramedics opened the ambulance doors wide and wheeled in a stretcher—one of its wheels squeaking as it rolled across sterile floor. As if it were a french fry thrown into an empty parking lot, the emergency response team descended upon the stretcher like hungry seagulls.

Barbara fell into step beside them. “Twenty-nine-year-old woman with no relevant past medical history,” said the paramedic. “Status: Post encounter with animal attack. Numerous lacerations to the abdomen. GCS 10, minimal response to verbal stimuli, and shocky. BP 100 over 50.”

The victim was heavyset. She had pressure dressings wrapped across her distended stomach and up to chest. The telltale blood had already begun to seep through the paramedic's bandages.

“Stabilize her. Run the fluids wide open,” she ordered. “O neg, now. Type and cross, later.” There wasn’t time to check for blood type. Urgency demanded certainty.

The resident jumped to the task, but struggled to find a vein. “I’m having trouble getting a line,” he said tightly. “Her veins are collapsed.” He moved to the patient’s neck instead and painstakingly inserted a central line into her jugular vein. Soon, the tubing flowed red with blood.

Barbara increased her pace, moving near the patient’s head. The young woman blinked up at her in a haze. Conscious. She had long, brown hair matted with sweat and curled around her face. A brushstroke of blood was just starting to crust at her temple. Barbara brushed the hair from her eyes. Her face was a mask of pain. “What’s your name?” she asked gently.

“S-sarah.”

“Sarah, we’re going to take care of you,” she promised. Then, to the team, “set her up in Trauma 4 with a full blood panel, type cross match, and chest and abdominal x-rays.”  When they hurried to the task, she added, “and page the surgeon on call.” This time of night, it wasn’t a long list of candidates.

“I was attacked,” Sarah moaned. “By a..” she gasped. “A _monster_.”

Barbara gave hardly a pause in her step. A monster? Could it have been—

No, the effect came before the cause. Her patient had major blood loss, and those wounds had to be treated, stat, or else she’d bleed out. Barbara came to a halt as the stretcher was wheeled into the assigned trauma room and parked beside an empty bed. Fluorescent lights burned and softly buzzed overhead like a hive of radioactive bees.

“Move her on my count—” the trauma team surrounded the stretcher. “—One, two, three.” In unison, they lifted Sarah from the stretcher and set her as gently and efficiently as possible onto the bed. The paramedics removed the stretcher and left, closing curtain behind them like the intermission of a play.

Sarah breathed hard. Her chest rose and fell paradoxically. Barbara wrestled the stethoscope free from around her neck and pressed the cold diaphragm to Sarah’s chest. Barbara tuned out the din of activity around her. The right lung sounded fine, but the left lung gave barely a whisper. Pneumothorax. Something had pierced Sarah’s lung, and it had collapsed.

“Chest tube kit, stat.” A nurse set the kit on the tray, and opened it for her, revealing a row of gleaming instruments. Barbara pulled the blue sterile gloves on and picked up a scalpel. She held her breath in sympathy and counted two ribs down. She drew the scalpel across the intercostal space between the ribs, slicing up towards her armpit. Then, with haste, she installed a chest tube through the incision. It was like fitting a key into a lock. Then, with needle, thread, and care, she sewed the tube into place.

Sarah gasped a hard breath. “She’s breathing,” said Barbara. Specks of blood spotted the blue of her gloves like a robin's egg and dulled the gleam of her scalpel. She set it on the tray with a soft clatter. “What are her vitals?”

“BP 90 over 40. Heart rate 50 and dropping,” said a nurse. _BEEP!_ screamed the cardiac monitor.

Barbara touched the patient’s face. It was cold and clammy. She lifted her eyelids and shone a light into her eyes. Pupillary reflex fixed and dilated. Something was still wrong, an internal injury, a nicked artery, _something_. She was going into cardiac arrest. “She’s crashing,” Barbara warned. “Code blue!”

She seized a resident’s attention. “Start chest compressions.” He obeyed, pressing rhythmically into Sarah’s chest. “Prepare to intubate and give her an amp of epi.” Another resident and nurse rushed to follow her orders, respectively indubating Sarah and injecting her IV with epinephrine.

At Barbara’s word, a code specialist prepared the defibrillator monitor, and in a moment the indicative whine of the machine announced it was charging.

“Charging to three hundred,” said the specialist, as the defiliater whined. Then, it beeped, and the team instinctively stepped back. “Clear.” He pressed the paddles to the patient’s chest, and they roared to life. When he pressed the button, there was a sharp _beep_ , and Sarah twitched on her cot.

_Beep_ …. _Beep_ ….. _BEEP_ . _Beep_ ….

“Still in v-fib.” Barbara swore. “Resume CPR.”

While the respiratory therapist kept Sarah breathing, the resident resumed chest compressions. Barbara watched the small lifeline of the cardiac monitor like a cat stalking a piece of string. The cycles of compressions and defib stretched on like an endless mobius loop.

Ten minutes.

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty minutes, and Barbara was ready to call it. She held on to Sarah’s hand and squeezed. The skin was cold beneath her glove. Her pulse remained absent. “Charge to three-sixty.”

“Charging to three-sixty.” The specialist responded. VEEEEEEEET...BEEP! “Clear!”

The heart rate monitor gave a thready sign of life. _Beep_ . _Beep_ . _Beep_.

Barbara let out a sigh of relief. Now that her patient could breath, she could too. “Get this patient to OR.” Sarah was now stable enough to be transported. The rest of the operation—the painstaking process of suturing her many wounds—could now go through without immediate threat of failure.

Barbara removed her gloves, and threw them in a biological waste bin. At the end of a successful ER visit, she usually felt tense with relief. But there was a cause to every effect and a weapon to every wound. Some large creature was loose in Arcadia—Sarah may have been its first victim, but she might not be its last.

 

 

Barbara stood in Trollmarket. People talked and bartered, ate and laughed. A sea of movement and color surrounded her, but she was a statue—ironic, as she was the only person there without stone for skin. Trolls and gnomes and other denizens of the deep parted around her as if she were an invisible but widely acknowledged barrier.

The amulet felt cold in her hand. Cold iron and sunlight.

She hadn’t heard from Enrique in almost eight weeks, so when he contacted her with promise of news, Barbara jumped at the offer.

He hadn’t arrived yet. She waited at the Troll Pub, one of many of such establishments in Trollmarket. A drink idled in front of her—a weak attempt to blend in—but the viscous green liquid glowed ominously, bits of rocky chunks floating in her cup. There was a chink in the stoneware, which she dug into with a trim fingernail.

Most denizens ignored her. The trolls had long grown used to her presence, which was fortunate, because it allowed her to sit without disturbance. The room was cavernous, lit by the glow of bioluminescent crystals. They cast the stone hides of the trolls in vibrant hues.

She was still wearing her hospital scrubs. She had barely clocked out of work before driving to the bridge and descending into Trollmarket. Her stomach grumbled at her, a reminder of how long it had been since she last ate.

She scanned the pub, looking for Enrique. _Can’t talk about it here_ , he had whispered into his host mother’s borrowed phone. _Meet you in the Troll Pub_. It must have been serious, to have him even considering setting foot in Trollmarket, where changelings were seen as untrustworthy at best, and “impure” at worst.

_Scriiiitch_. Claws scraped shrilly against stone nearby, and Barbara was pulled from her thundercloud of thoughts like a kite on a string.

Enrique scrambled up the stone table and sat himself on the stool beside her. His green scruff was, as always, mussed, sticking up this way and that. His cat-like pupils scanned the room like wary searchlights. He earned a scoff from the bartender, distrusting eyes from a patron across the bar, and Enrique glared in return.

“Enrique,” she said, sliding him her untouched drink. “How’s the new position?”

Enrique scoffed, accepting the cup. He slurped it down with fervor, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Being a baby’s fun, Doc. No responsibilities, no talking, just sleepin’ and eatin’ all day. Heh.” He directed a hundred yard stare into to his empty cup.

“That doesn’t get—” lonely? “—boring?”

“Eh, it’s a sweet gig. Cla—my human family’s a real treat. And it’s a party compared to the Darklands.”

Changelings walked a tightrope between oppressor and oppressed. While they pulled the strings of the human world, they also suffered the prejudice of trolls. Enrique replaced someone’s family member without their knowledge or consent. And yet, he was never allowed a family himself. Even his name wasn’t his own.

She hardened her expression. Enrique would never forgive her for showing him pity. It just wasn’t the changeling way.

“So.” She signalled the bartender for a refill. “What information did you have?”

Enrique belched. “New player in town.”

Barbara’s spine electrified. For years there had been a succession of power vacuums in the Gumm-Gumm ranks, and the quiet in Arcadia was deafening. She had been on pins and needles. Every stray cat was a goblin, every tree in passing headlights a Gumm-Gumm in waiting.

“Are they’re working for,” she lowered her voice, “ _Gunmar_?”

Enrique flinched. She didn’t blame him. She would flinch, too, over threat of being used to sate the Devourer’s bloodthirst. She had heard tales of Gunmar’s taste for human flesh, supplemented by the changelings in his thrall.

“Yeah, well ol’ black and gnarly has a general, goes by—” and Enrique let out a gargling roar.

Barbara caught sight of the pub, expecting to see a legion of eyes turned their way by his outburst. The bartender shrugged at her. Apparently, drunken roars weren’t uncommon in Troll bars. She bent to Enrique's level and hissed, “what was _that_?”

He smiled sheepishly. “Well, that’s ‘is name. AAARRGGHH!!!.” He roared again, but in an inside voice. “They was very specific not to drop the exclamation points!”

Barbara pinched the bridge of her nose and breathed to the count of three. “Okay, AAARRGGHH!!! is the new Gum-Gum general. And he’s in Acadia?”

“Not yet.” He tipped the second cup to his lips and downed it, sighing with satisfaction. Then, he eyed her. “Not that I don’t appreciate a little glug. But you promised…” he trailed off meaningfully.

Barbara rolled her eyes and pulled up her sweaty-smelling laundry bag, waving it in front of his face. His head tracked the movement like a dog slavering over a teased bone. She berated herself for the lazy comparison.

“Argyle, like I promised,” she assured him. Old socks that weren’t hers, hidden on the bottom of her dresser drawer. She handed them over, and Enrique took the bag greedily. His mouth was a cavern of slavering stalactite teeth. Barbara watched him eat with a morbid sense of fascination. His teeth ripped the fabric the same way a shredder ate old credit cards, with strands of saliva-covered threads hanging from the corners of his mouth like spaghetti. He slurped them up with a wet smacking of his lips.

She averted her eyes, clearing her throat. “This general must be carrying out Bular’s mission now.”

“Yeah, ‘cept he’s less subtle ‘bout it.”

Less subtle than Bular? The only things that had kept him in the shadows were the Janus Order and the limits of troll physiology.

“He eats people,” Enrique continued, “and changelings, too, if we’re in ‘is way. Doesn’t say much. You know not to cross him, though. In the Darklands, you hear the stories!” His voice took on a tone between awe and fear. “I ‘eard he once brought down a mountain troll all by ‘imself. Made the whole rest of ‘em join the Gumm-Gumms.” His half-chewed sock hung from his mouth like a soggy second tongue, appetite apparently forgotten.

“Enrique,” she said slowly, “AAARRGGHH!!! defeated _Gatto_?”

He shook his head. “No, another one. He was called Craggen, I think. But that old volcano’s supposed to be next. They was lookin’ for some kind of fancy stone ‘e had. I dunno.”

Whatever Gatto had, the Gumm-Gumms definitely should _not_ get their claws on. He had once refused her and Blinky when they had visited, and _A Brief Recapitulation_ said that his stomach possessed a wealth of treasures, many dangerous beyond record.

Gatto had stubbornly remained neutral for years. Nothing she or Blinky had said could convince him to ally against the Gumm-Gumms, so great was his fear of Gunmar. And yet he was a _mountain troll_ , with a mouth large enough to swallow her house as an appetizer. With him turned Gumm-Gumm, the southern troll kingdoms would be defenseless.  

“S-so.” Barbara cleared her throat. “So we’ll have to get to Gatto’s Keep before he does.”

Enrique gave her a funny look. “You’re not actually think’n ‘bout fighting ‘im—are you, Doc?”

Barbara stared back. “It’s my job. I’m the Trollhunter.”

“Yeah, but... you gotta be careful.”

She laughed without humor. She was a surgeon, for god’s sakes. She knew care, rehearsed it every day before work, and tucked in into the clockwork of her amulet by night. She’d taken down scores of goblins, a stalkling assassin, and defeated Bular the Vicious. What care could she spare now?

“When will he be there?”

“Should be a few days. He went and stole a Gyre.”

She shuddered at the stomach-dizzying memory of the Gyre. She used to dislike airplanes. The Gyre put that and all other human transport to shame in its incredible efficiency and equal ability to rearrange your internal organs into an expressionist painting. Yet it was the only safe way for trolls to migrate between Trollmarket and Gatto’s Keep.

“Uh, there’s one more thing.”

“...Yes?”

He rubbed the back of his scruff. “I think someone in the Janus’s on to me. There was something, err, someone following me to the bridge, but I couldn’t get a good look at ‘em.”

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. “You think someone followed you here?”

“I dunno,” Enrique said. “Stashed the horn whatsit where I always do, and didn’t see anything on the stairway down. Could be nuthin’.”

Barbara scanned the crowded bar, now hyper aware of every eye that glanced their way, every patron that was within earshot. She stood up abruptly. “We need to get you out of here.”

“Aww, come on, Doc! I was enjoying this here glug and I never get to—”

“ _Now_ , Enrique,” She ordered, grabbing his shoulder. He flinched and pawed off her hand.

“Listen, Troll’unter,” he said. “I’d not get you in trouble on purpose, I swear!”

Barbara’s brow furrowed. “I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about _you_!” Her voice rose with emotion, and she sucked in a sharp breath. There could be no mistaking the burn of eyes on them now.

Enrique looked at her like she had gone mad. She gritted her teeth and sent her umpteenth mental death threat to Gunmar. Damn him and his brainwashing, ad infinitum.

“Listen,” he said quickly, placatingly, “they’ve been looking for the mole for months, now. But I haven’t—”

THUNK.

She blinked, and a glowing green knife was buried in Enrique’s chest. It was almost as large as he was, and from it rippled a bright blue light as Enrique’s limbs became stone. The bag of half-eaten socks dropped from his now non-opposable hand, spilling to the floor.

Barbara lunged across the bar and pulled the knife from his chest. If he were a human patient, she would never directly remove a knife from a wound, but his troll body petrified at an alarming rate, and there was no blood to caution her.

A small piece of stone dislodged from his chest, spider-web cracks diverging from the wound like fractals. She held the hilt of the knife with a white-knuckled grip. Someone screamed, and the panic caught like fire.

Enrique petrified further, binding gray creeping up his neck. “Sorry, Doc.” Enrique bit out. “I wasn’t… careful… enough.”

His expression solidified in place, a permanent statue of bared teeth and blank eyes. Lifeless.

Barbara’s armor flared on, her command words muffled in her own ears. All she could feel was head and heart and cold.

She scanned the enfolding chaos. Trolls shouted and fled, piling up at the exits like boulders blocking the mouth of a cave. A figure across the bar was leaving with the masses, but at a stroll’s pace. They had a familiar disguise on, one she knew from the office of her changeling—a glamour mask.

She leaped across the bar, ignoring the protestations of the bartender, and gave the assassin chase.


	2. A Fight Abridged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barbara gives chase to the assassin and processes the information Enrique smuggled to her.

Daylight materialized into her hand like an old memory. It burned cold with the blue magic of its namesake as she summoned it. Barbara weaved and dodged civilians through the market with eyes intent on the assassin.

The figure blurred with light as their form shifted—troll, human, and troll again—surrounded by a familiar eerie green glow. They became a ram-horned behemoth as they bounded through the smithing district, shouldering patrons aside and upending a merchant’s cart of salvaged electronics into a clattering pile. They slipped through an alley with the squat body of a Quagawump, and out the other side disguised as a lithe hulder.

Barbara whipped out half-hearted apologies as she leapt over the tipped cart and past the victims of shoving, never slowing. She never took her eyes off the figure either—sure that if she did, she’d instantly lose their flickering form in the densely packed bridges and labyrinth of side streets.

The assassin made a running leap and sprung with their lanky hulder legs, hurtling over a wide gulch, then tucked and rolled back to their feet, hardly breaking stride.

Barbara made a split second turn, running adjacent along the chasm. The amulet may have given her protection and strength, but it hardly gave her the ability to leap long chasms in a single bound.

The assassin wore a dark cloak, which flapped madly as they ran, dark enough to curb the flash of green—their form shifted like a flash of lightning, quick and bright and never striking the same place twice. Stag antlers crowner their head, then disappeared; cloven hooves became clawed feet, then the gnarled talons of a stalkling.

Barbara’s trgateory was heading in the mouth of a tunnel. No bridges across the fissure. Adrenaline pumped through her like hot lava, and her mind was far from clear. Her boots clanked noisily against the stone, a counterpoint to her thudding heart. The assassin turned from the fissure—further away, and further out of sight.

Barbara banked again, a hair’s breadth from the cliff’s edge, and hurtled along the flat plane of a distended crystal. She reached the edge at a desperate sprint, pushing off, and her foot touched open air.

Instead of the ledge she was aiming for, Barbara fell short and slammed into the face of the cliff. Helmet made impact with stone, rattling her head like a car engine. She gasped, vision swimming as if she was underwater.

Her sword fell from her hand, whizzing down the crevasse, and her falling after. She resummoned it in a thought’s mark, then thrust it forward. Daylight buried in the stone, and she held on as the sword carved through rock’s face, sinking lower and lower. Debris sprayed her exposed face.

Finally, her descent halted, and she was hanging a good several feet from solid ground, legs swinging aimlessly. Above, the world was aglow with technicolor crystals. Below, there was a yawning chasm of darkness. “Please, don’t disappear,” she begged her sword.

A head peered from the peak, bright eyes drowning the matte planes of their mask in a sickly green glow. Chalk dusted the fingertips of their gloves. The painted mask they wore hid all traces of expression or recognition.

Barbara’s first impression was right. The distinctive white markings of the disguise marked it as a glamour mask—she had seen replicas before—an artifact that allowed the wearer to transform not between two forms, as changelings did, but take on _any_ glamour.

The assassin raised their weapon, a crescent curved blade, and Barbara blinked at the beam of yellow-orange light it reflected.

“Do not interfere with the Janus Order again, Trollhunter.” The assassin’s voice was distorted by the mask, becoming a pastiche of troll voices—not unlike her amulet’s legion. “Our other operatives are not so easily corrupted.”

Barbara rocked back and forth, swinging like a pendulum. Her flailing was to no avail; the assassin disappeared before she could reach a steady momentum.

She cursed, and with her left hand, reached to the crystals at her belt. Without looking, she picked the red one and unhooked it as if it was live grenade. It rose, bidden by gravity’s curse, and carried her with it. Barbara held it in clenched fist facing upwards, and ascended as the magic pulled her with it.

As soon as she rose to level with the ground, Barbara released her grip, letting the crystal fly like a runaway balloon to the ceiling of the cavern. She tumbled to the ground, and sighed. That was the third levitas crystal this month. Blinky would despair of her.

The assassin fled a nearby bridge at a speed that belied running. At the apex, they looked over their shoulder and startled as Barbara barreled toward them, Daylight aloft.

Her fingers tightened at the hilt of the sword as she swung overhead. The glow of wide eyes, a flash of steel, and the assassin blocked the blow a bare inch from their chest. Daylight met curved steel with a clang.

The assassin had the literal high ground, and used it to leverage the angles of the blades, until Daylight was repelled from their heart. Then, they kicked Barbara flatly in the chestplate. The attack didn’t hurt much against her armor, but had her sliding to one knee to avoid falling down the incline with the grace of a medical dummy.

The weight of the assassin’s blade pushed down on Daylight, and a second flashed from their off hand. Barbara spun her blade to intercept the axis between them, then pushed herself to her feet. The assassin lashed out, cutting a line through the black material of Barbara’s arm, and she hissed at the sting of pain.

Barbara replied with a feint, then sliced under her opponent’s guard. Daylight struck flesh—weak human flesh—and came away with blood pungent sweet. Daylight made the dull droplets glister.

Her opponent moved their blades to protect their wounded abdomen, and Barbara struck again with the speed and angle to succeed the blow with sparks.

The spectacle had drawn attention from the trolls below. Lost to the dance of blades, the worried voices and fearful shouts faded into white noise. She could hear the assassin gasping. Sweat dripped into Barbara’s eyes.

The assassin growled and spun, twin blades twirling a blur. They struck, and Barbara blocked. Strike met dodge and counter strike. Blades locked into a stalemate. “I didn’t think the Trollhunter would waste her vengeance on an _Impure_ ,” the assassin mocked. Their heavy breathing betrayed them.

Barbara gritted her teeth. “The word you’re looking for,” she corrected, pushing Daylight forward, “is _changeling_.” With the force of anger, she broke the holding pattern, slashed, and missed. Her muscles ached to sustain the fight. The assassin caught her again, oblique in her vambrace. Barbara bit her tongue and winced at the taste of tinny blood.

The mask shifted green again. Their cloak fell back with their new height, revealing a crown of ram horns towering over her. They were a shadow come alive, eyes burning like hot coals.

Barbara froze.

This was not Bular the Vicious, because he was dead. Yet they were Bular in every other way, from the coarse black fur to the cage of huge, mismatched teeth. They smiled like a predator who hunted fear and smelled it on her.

“We know you, Barbara Lake,” they said. They spoke with Bular’s stolen voice, but his characteristic roar had gone cold. “If you go to Gatto’s Keep, Argante will be freed, and blood and dust will be on your hands.”

Barbara raised Daylight. Adrenaline made her arms shaky. She had killed Bular once. Her hand would not be stayed by phantoms.

Not-Bular laughed. It was the same laugh. It made her shiver as if she had touched her own grave.

The assassin took advantage of her hesitation. When Barbara refocused, they jumped up and drop-kicked her with the force of a kangaroo, sending Barbara tumbling down the bridge, the world a blur—as if she were trapped in the spin cycle of a washing machine. Daylight fell.

At the foot of the bridge, she blinked up at the crystal stalactites that clung to the cave’s ceiling like teeth. They blurred in and out of focus into a dizzying kaleidoscope. She closed her eyes until the wave of vertigo passed.

When Barbara finally pulled herself up, her body ached in protest. The cut on her arm stung, her forehead pounded furiously, and she was sure there was a pattern on bruises spread across her back. She straightened her shoulders with a crack. She wasn’t as young at this job as she used to be.

The assassin was gone. A throng of concerned and curious trolls clustered around her like constellations. Unpolished children pointed and stared with snaggletooth smiles. Nearby shopkeepers hung their heads out the windows of their shops to see the mighty Trollhunter fall down the stairs like a geriatric woman. She met their umpteen blinking eyes and knew that the assassin could be any one of them.

She also knew that to even acknowledge an assassin—let alone a changeling—in their midst would be to spread panic. Enrique’s killer would use that to their further advantage.

She dismissed her armor with a flick of will, and felt the exhaustion of battle creep into her bones as adrenaline drained away.

Her pale green scrubs were torn where the assassin’s blade had sliced through. She checked the wound and caught a smear of dark blood, sticky on the pads of her fingers. A doctor’s eye told her it was deeper than it felt, but not fatal. It was no worse than what Enrique had suffered. A lump formed in her throat. She had let his killer get away.

Worse, she had left his petrified body vulnerable and alone. If anyone had taken him, had smashed him, there would be nothing left to remember him by—another changeling turned footnote.

Barbara caught the eye of a young courier troll, a leather satchel hanging around one spiky shoulder. She patted her pockets for troll currency, but she was still wearing her scrubs.

It was late. She had just gotten off a day shift at the hospital only to fail her friend twice—first to save his life and then to catch his assassin. And now she had no money she could use. Frothy emotions bubbled up her throat and she choked them down.

With a jerk of her hands, she wrenched her shoes free, then peeled off her socks. Wearing the shoes bare, her feet rubbed uncomfortably against the rubber. She approached the courier with her pair of sweaty socks, and said, “Fetch Blinkous Galandrigal, please. Tell him to meet the Trollhunter at Troll Pub.”

The courier licked his lips and nodded, stashing the socks away. Then, he left to carry out her task.

Barbara walked, sore and tired and with sockless feet, back to the place this mess had started. She could rest later. Now, she needed answers.

 

 

Back at the Troll Pub, Enrique still sat on his stool, an epitaph of stone. Luxury argyle socks scattered around him like a messy nest. Some grew soggy in puddles of spilt glug. She stuffed them back into their burlap sack, earning sticky fingers from the floor, which felt like it hadn’t been washed for a century.

The pub had mostly been evacuated. The bartender cleaned the counters, and one gravel-skinned stalkling nursed a drink in the far corner. A few gnomes still wriggled from their targets as projectiles on a dart board.

Barbara picked up Enrique—surprisingly heavy for his size—and set him on one of the tables. Stone met stone with a muffled _thunk_. He was now eye level with her, but his usual smarmy expression was toothless without his cat eyes and shark grin.

Their staring contest was interrupted by a clearing of the throat. Barbara broke eye contact. Enrique would have won anyways.

Mr. Blinky sat down across from her, his six eyes searching the room like a chameleon monitoring its glass tank for danger. One pair of arms was crossed, and a third hand reached into his belt pouch and withdrew a single red crystal. “You must be more careful with your arsenal, Master Barbara,” he advised.

Barbara gratefully took it from him. Here was another troll telling her to be “careful.” Maybe the fallout of Bular’s reign had caused her more than anxiety. It had made her complacent.

She stowed it back on her belt. It clinked softly against the other two crystals, forming a ternion of primary colors. “Thanks, Mr. Blinky.” She narrowed her eyes. “Did you just call me ‘Master’ Barbara again? I’ve told you, it’s just Barbara.”

“Ah, yes. Of course...Barbara.”

She smiled despite herself. He would slip up in a few minutes, and it would be back to the usual honorific.  
  
He cleared his throat and gestured towards Enrique. “Why is there a corpse on our table?”

That soured her smile. She gave an abridged account of the fight, the assassin, and Enrique’s message; skirting around the more incriminating details about _how_ and _why_ she had contact with the Janus Order.

“You brought a _changeling_ into Trollmarket?” he demanded.

Barbara ducked her head. It was obvious how Trollmarket thought of changelings. Most wouldn’t trust them as far as they could throw them. They were bogeymen to trolls as trolls were to humans.

“He was someone’s child once,” she argued, defensiveness crawling into her voice. “He risked his life and safety to help me. Without him, I wouldn’t know about the Gumm-Gumm’s next plan.” She deliberately placed the assassin’s dagger on the table. “Someone obviously didn’t want him talking to me.”

Two of Blinky’s eyes widened, and he took the dagger, holding it carefully by the hilt. The blade was no longer than a candlestick, but had a scalpel's edge that came to a crooked point. The dark steel was etched with Trollish runes which glowed faintly green.

“Cold iron,” Blinky observed. “Bone handle, with an obsidian bolster. And,” he rotated the dagger, and light caught the stains of green, “poisoned. This is a valuable weapon to leave behind.”

“It turned him to stone in seconds,” said Barbara. “What poison could do that?”

Blinky frowned. “More importantly, how did the killer steal into Trollmarket without anyone noticing? If they truly possess a glamour mask, they could yet be a danger in our midst!”

Barbara sunk further into the hard stone seat. Her joints had gone stiffer than stoneskin.

The bartender brought her a drink, and she drank it without thinking, then spat the bilous glug across the table. It coated her tongue with the aftertaste of fried battery.

She spoke around the bad taste in her mouth. “Enrique was trying to warn me about Gunmar’s new general, Aargh.” She said instead of growled it, but Blinky must have got the message because, true to his name, all six eyes blinked at her in shock.

“AAARRGGHH!!!?” he growled. He stabbed the dagger into the table, embedding it in the stone. “As in the contemptible General Aarghaumont?”

“You know of him?”

“He fought for Gunmar at the Battle of Killahead Bridge. The brute would have ate me, if I hadn’t,” he hemmed, “that is, if I wasn’t so perspicacious. He killed our elder, Vendel, wounded Deya most fatally, and nearly turned the tide of the battle in Gunmar’s favor!”

“But he wasn’t imprisoned in the Darklands.” All other Gumm-Gumms had been, and even many changelings were prisoners to the nursery. How had AAARRGGHH!!! escaped their fate?

Blinky’s hands formed a double steeple. “We were losing the battle,” he admitted at length. “I made a, ah, strategic retreat from the battlefield. AAARRGGHH!!! gave chase. He must have been out of the radius of the Convergence.”

The Convergence. She had heard this story countless times—first, from Blinky himself as he told a young and scared human trollhunter, herself, about the legacy she had inherited. Later, she caught Deya’s name in the mouths of parents storytelling legends to their children. By Deya’s grace.

Barbara caught her fingers stretching the hole of her scrub shirt and rested the offending hand in her lap. Now that adrenaline had slammed the door on its way out, she was left with pain and fatigue and hunger, and all muffled her thoughts as if her brain were entombed in Jello. She took a long breath in and closed her eyes.

The bartender’s broom swept a surrusurs across the stones. The gnomes chittered and squeaked in their unintelligible language. If she strained concentration, she could hear the delicate sips of the stalkling enjoying his drink. Her heart wasn’t quite so loud.

She opened her eyes and met Blinky’s. “Our first priority is finding out where this AAARRRGGHH!!! is and what he’s planning.” When Blinky made to protest, Barbara held up a hand. “Regardless of how accurate Enrique’s warning was, I would rather find nothing than sit on our hands while a potential enemy plots against us.” She shifted, the stone seat quickly growing uncomfortable. “We also need to find the assassin. If we let them have free reign of Trollmarket, there’s no telling what more harm they could cause.”

“They could be anyone,” Blinky protested. His eyes roved the bar and its remaining patrons as if any one of them could be a changeling in glamour. He lowered his voice. “And if we manage to track them down, what’s to stop them from changing identities the second we find them? We need a place to start—a motive, a weakness, anything. Or else we’ll have to wait until they strike once more.”

“You think they’ll kill again.”

“I cannot say for certain,” said Blinky carefully. “But I can say that the perpetrator killed your diminutive informant for a reason—what he knew. As your counsel, I would exhort us to act on that information, and act quickly!”

“To Gatto’s Keep,” agreed Barbara. She paused, considering. “Gatto’s been neutral in the past, but,” she traded a look with a pair of Blinky’s eyes, “what if that changed?”

Trollmarket was usually drafty to human skin, but not enough that she could ignore the chill that settled over her. Gatto was the size and might of a _mountain_ , and yet he feared Gunmar enough not to stand against him. Though not an ally, that made him one less of an enemy. But if he switched sides, uprooted…

Barbara imagined a volcano standing free. Gatto’s head alone made her house look like a matchbox. His shadow would eclipse the sun over Argentina. His footfalls would rock the world with force enough to make the richter scale obsolete.

“We have to stop the Gumm-Gumms _before_ they reach Gatto,” Blinky agreed.

Her mouth knotted up into an aborted smile. Her headache made it very difficult to pretend at being fine. “Blinky, could you look into this poison for me, please?” Maybe there was an antitoxin, something to protect her vulnerable friends from sharing Enrique’s fate.

He rested his hands on hers, a cold and heavy weight, and smiled with all of his eyes. “Of course, Master Barbara. I’ll peruse the library post haste!” He rose and picked up the assassin’s dagger. “I’ll have some insight from the author himself.” He winked like a wave, going from one eye to the last. “If my brother’s head is not caught up in his hexes, Dictatious may be of some use for once.”

 

 

Her street was quiet and dark. Most women would rightfully feel threatened standing alone in the trust of night, but Barbara was armed with far more than pepper spray.

The streets were patrolled nightly, or at least they had been. She went on fewer patrols as of late, allowing her jobs as surgeon and mother to take priority.

But it was quiet. Not even alley cats or plundering raccoons disturbed the peace. With Bular around, they had been the twilight snacks of goblins. She was lucky that was all they had eaten.

She felt like an imposter, standing there in the street light outside her house with sockless shoes and a bandaged arm hidden beneath her sleeves. While her home had its lights on and her son safely inside, the Nuñez estate would be missing a child.

Enrique had been “put down for a nap”, but that excuse wouldn’t have lasted even long enough for her to have rushed to the surface and offer up an explanation. Her jaw clenched. As if there were any reasonable excuse they would accept. Their son was gone, kidnapped for all they knew. The fact that she was the Trollhunter didn’t matter—she was sworn to secrecy. And damn them all, her tangled oaths.

Barbara was suddenly anxious to see Jim, despite the guilt churning in her gut. Time didn’t stop for guilt, and the Nuñez’s son being gone didn’t prevent her from holding her own son close. She hurried inside.

Their home was suburban and the result of a surgeon's salary, plus days and nights of overtime. She had bought it years ago, and only paid off the mortgage a few years after Jim was born—and after _considerable_ medical school debt. Now it belonged to her in name and deed. The house was far enough away from the coast to be affordable, and much less likely to suffer from storms as a beachfront property might. It also happened to have a basement big and dark enough to hide a compromised changeling or a visiting troll from sunlight and the public eye.

She locked the door behind her and kicked off her dirt-caked boots, sending them falling across the front door rug. Her bare feet gripped the coarse fibers of the welcoming mat. She carefully set down her duffle bag, which met the floor with a dull thud. The bag contained her “troll hunting” clothes—casual slacks and blouse to wear instead of her hospital scrubs—and the heavy statue-corpse of Enrique.

Despite her frequent absence, home was always cleaner than she left it. The place bore the subtle fingerprints of her son’s handiwork—dustless bookshelves, dishes washed and drying in the rack, and a floor so polished you could see your reflection in it. Jim always managed to tidy up while she was gone.

She felt guilty enough leaving her son alone for long evenings; the idea of him picking up after her made it worse. She couldn't remember when housekeeping became a duty for Jim, instead of simple chores. Barbara made sure to do her part and lift her son’s selfnamed burdens whenever she could. He was too young to have so many worries—especially when his world was limited to human problems.

“Hey, honey. I’m home!” she called. The smell of garlic wafted like a cloud from the kitchen along with the crack and sizzle of cooking meat.

Jim bounded into the hall and sock-slid across the laminate wood floor. Flour dusted his cheek. “Hey, Mom, welcome home, let me take that for you!” He proceeded to remove her lab coat before she could protest, and hung in on the coast track. Barbara stifled a wince as the coat brushed across her hidden bandages, and clenched her teeth in a tight smile.

Jim gave her a saccharine smile in return. “Come on in. Sit down,” Jim invited her, dashing back into the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

The room was warm from the working oven, a welcome byproduct in the early chills of autumn. She sat as requested while Jim cooked, and felt a swell of pride at his obvious talent for it. What started as a kind gesture, feeding her after long hospital shifts, became a hobby Jim cleary took seriously. Stacks of cookbooks rested on the counter, bursting with different colored post-it notes, additions to recipes Jim had made himself.

“I made your favorite,” Jim announced. His back blocked the stove, but he wielded a spatula like she wielded a sword—like it was an extension of his hand—and dished out two plates of food. He set them at their respective places at the table—golden blueberry waffles drizzled with glittering ribbons of syrup, and mac and cheese freckled with bits of bacon.

She mentally did laps about her calendar. Was it Mother’s Day? National Doctors’ Day? Her birthday, but no, it was September, and her birthday was in April. Finally she asked, “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion,” Jim hedged. “I just wanted to have a family dinner together.” He turned off the stove. “When’s the last time we really sat down and talked?”

Barbara’s suspicion deflated. She was usually the kind of the person to look a gift horse in the mouth and find sharp teeth. Jim was right, though. She owed him a family dinner. During her late night duties in Trollmarket or at the hospital, she missed them, too.

She set the table, and sat opposite Jim, digging into the casserole with her spoon and gusto. Steam rose from the mac and cheese and fogged up her glasses.

“Thank you, dear. It’s delicious.” And it was. Jim’s cooking had improved markedly over the years, and this was a dish that would be right at home in a restaurant.

Jim shoveled the macaroni into his mouth, chewing openly when the heat snipped at his tongue. Barbara hid a smile behind her napkin. Jim swallowed. He absently pushed around another spoonful. “Toby and I went to the auto shop after school today,” he said at last.

“Oh?”

Jim abandoned his spoon and pretenses. “Yeah. And, you know, once I turn sixteen I’ll be able to get my learner’s permit.”

She mirrored him, lowering her own spoon and looking at him. His blue eyes had the same steely determination she recognized in the mirror. Of course he wanted to learn how to drive; most teens did at his age. It was sign he was growing up.

Feeling the pang of a dry throat, Barbara drank slow sips of her water. No floating rocks in this drink.

“Alright,” she said at last.

Jim’s answering smile was infectious, and she beamed back. He was a responsible kid. He had good grades, polite friends, and obeyed house rules as often as she could except any teenager. She trusted him with this privilege.

“Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

“Love you, too, honey.”

If she could preserve that smile in stone, Barbara never would. Unlike trolls, human children grew and changed over the course of their short lives, diverted by obstacles and opportunity.

If she could do anything to give the Nuñez family that milestone back, she would—so they could one day see their boy grow into a teenager as compassionate as Jim.


End file.
